Perhaps I am a little bit biased – well, I most definitely am, but that by the by! – and find many of the self-shots by men just a little bit too over the top sometimes. Chocolate sauce is one thing, but there is a time and a place and, to my way of thinking, also an appropriate body! Not that I have anything against men taking their little mirror images, I am sure there are more than enough people out there who find such things inspiring, just as there are more than enough who find the images of women – myself included, naturally – a tad interesting. And I have not been one to hold back when it comes to such images, my Tumblr account shows that and there are plenty of examples on this blog too, including this post. Let’s start, though, with the unfinished image first by way of example:

Photo Source: yeahpics

Whilst most people might want to cut to the chase, it is fun, now and then, to see a little bit of the action leading up to those action moments rather than just a few seconds of unadulterated revelation.

And what better way, since we’re talking about mirror shots here, that to go slowly, leisurely, through a complete series?

Photo Source: yeahpics

Look at it this way, there is barely a magazine in the world, and very few decent web sites, which only publish the one end-shot. If they do then there is hardly any system to the selection, just a mess of different images culled from all over the place and designed for short – dare I say one-sided? – gratification. A series holds the viewers attention far longer, especially if there is a bit of text, a storyline to go with it. It shows different sides of the same image – or the same person in this case – different poses, positions, angles. Life would be very boring indeed if we just looked at everything from exactly the same point of view all the time. In fact, come to think of it, life would be just like a political or religious discussion if there were no possible movement from one side to another, from one view to the next and, I would hope, precious few of us want that!

Photo Source: yeahpics

There are possibly a few people who go into the bathroom or a changing room at their local clothing store, strip off and strike a pose, photograph themselves and then that’s it but, I am sure you’ll agree, very few indeed. I suspect most would take a little bit of time to find the right pose, to sort themselves out and get their best image – naughty or otherwise. That’s one of the advantages of modern cameras, you’ve enough storage space to take several hundred images and sort out the best before uploading to Facebook or wherever.

Photo Source: yeahpics

Fine, when you look at some of these images it’s hard to imagine that any time has been taken at all. It’s hard to see a person sorting through ten or twenty shots and picking out the best one to share with their lover – who can then share it with the rest of the world – unless all the rest, the rejected ones, were so miserable, so out of focus or covered with the dirt of a bathroom mirror cleaned with a slovenly lack of care that even the most desperate attention seeker rejected them.

Photo Source: yeahpics

With a series it’s so much easier to create your own story, to wrap your mind inside a real fantasy and concentrate on ‘other things’. No one wants to read a book which only has the last page, the solution to a crime, the happy couple riding off into the sunset and nothing else. So why should it be any different with photography? That is, unless the image is so good, such a wonderful creation that no other information is needed.

Photo Source: #

Or unless you’re so quick off the mark that one single photograph is enough to satisfy all your desires, bring that final moment quickly and effectively. Then again, I’m sure there are such people out there too, the ones who have nothing but the images available on the Internet because, having attuned themselves to a quick fix, they can’t manage anything longer than a poke and a grunt before it’s all over in real life.